Purpose and desire, p.31
Purpose and Desire, page 31
Socrates, 257
sodium chloride, 213
soft inheritance, 110, 114, 124, 129
soma, 102–7, 122–23
“Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died” (Wolfe), 129
species, 76–77, 84, 138, 207, 259
spindle apparatus, 164–65, 177, 184
spirochetes, 170–71, 173–75, 176–77, 179, 181–83, 189
spontogenesis, 230–32
sports, 109, 138
stability, 17–19
standing wave metaphor, 250–52
Statistical Methods for Research Workers (Fisher), 145
Stazione Zoologica, 134
sugars, 48, 231–32
sulfur, 171–74, 189
superorganism, 30, 189, 204–6, 219
“symbiotic organisms,” 189
synthetic organisms, 225–27
Synthia, 225–26
tautology, 8, 143–44
telegony, 96
Tennyson, Alfred, 149
termites, 1–6, 198, 202–6, 281
Tessier, Henri, 78–79
Tevye, 296
therapeutic bloodletting, 28
thermal niche, 275–78
thermodynamic systems, xii–xv, 246–47, 249–250
Thermoplasma bacteria, 168, 171–74, 176
Thermoplasma-like ancestor (TLA), 174–75, 178–79, 182–83
thermoregulation, 62–68, 275
time-lapse videos, 2–5
The Tinkerer’s Accomplice (Turner), x, xv, 70, 182, 253
traits, 137, 147–49, 263
Trinity College, Cambridge, 142
triple helix metaphor, 274–75, 282–83
trophic-dynamic concept, 272–73
Tufts University, 53
Turner, Lucille Vawter Busby, 156–57
uncertainty, 53
undulipodium, 161–65, 168, 170, 176, 177, 183
University of California at Santa Cruz, 278
University of Cambridge, 88, 90, 142, 195, 269
University of Cape Town, 269
University of Chicago, 146
University of Leiden, 89
University of Michigan, 197
University of Minnesota, 272
University of Montpellier, 30
University of Namibia, 257
University of Pennsylvania, 115
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, 117
Urey, Harold, 232
Ur-replicator, 236
Ur-symbiosis, 168
U.S. Department of Agriculture, 146
van Houten, Peter, 296–98
variation, 137
The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (Darwin), 93, 96
Venter, Craig, 225–27
Venus anadyomene, 134
Vermeer, Johannes, 127
Vingerklip (“Finger Rock”), 16
vis essentialis, 27–28
vis mediatrix, 29–31, 80
vital adaptation, 129
vitalism: basic questions of, 27–29; Bernard as vindicator of, 25–26, 40–41, 43–44, 47, 292; in Cope’s theory, 118–19; ghost of Morgan and, 289; Magendie as critic of, 32; Neo-Lamarckians, 113–14; process vitalism, 37–38; scientific vitalism, 29, 77–78, 80, 84, 87, 89–90, 207–8; teaching of, 26–27
von Neumann, John, 58
Wallace, Alfred Russel, 92
“warm-blooded” creatures, 67
wasps, 198
Waters, Augustus, 296–98
Watson, 261
Wedgwood family, 89
Weismann, August, 99–107, 110, 114, 118, 129, 131, 135, 156, 271
Weismann barrier, 102–5, 119, 121, 123–24
wheel, 170
Wiener, Norbert, 50–55
wings-as-insect-nets idea, 287
Wise, Kurt, 296
Wistar Institute, 116
Wolfe, Tom, 129
World War I, 51, 52, 145
World War II, 51, 53, 57
Wright, Quincy, 146
Wright, Sewall Green, 144–150, 156, 194, 198, 262, 267, 273, 279
X chromosomes, 200
Y chromosomes, 200
Yale University, 269
Zeus, 84
Zoonomia (Darwin), 90
zygotes, 120, 135, 208–9, 219
About the Author
DR. J. SCOTT TURNER is a leading biologist and physiologist and professor of biology at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York. He is the author of The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures and The Tinkerer’s Accomplice: How Design Emerges from Life Itself, and his work has garnered attention in the New York Times Book Review, Science, Nature, American Scientist, National Geographic Online, and on NPR’s Science Friday and other leading media outlets.
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Figure 4.6
Adapted by J. Scott Turner from K. Nagashima et al., “Neuronal Circuitries Involved in Thermoregulation,” Autonomic Neuroscience 85 (2000), permission granted by Elsevier.
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Figure 11.6
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Figure 11.7
Adapted by J. Scott Turner from P. E. Hertz et al., “Homage to Santa Anita,” Evolution 37 (1983): 1075–84.
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Epilogue
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Copyright
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PURPOSE AND DESIRE. Copyright © 2017 by J. Scott Turner. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
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Names: Turner, J. Scott, 1951- , author.
Title: Purpose and desire : a new model for understanding life / J. Scott Turner.
Description: First edition. | New York : HarperOne, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017019588 | ISBN 9780062651563 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Life (Biology)—Philosophy. | Life (Biology)—Philosophy--History. | Homeostasis. | Evolution (Biology)
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EPub Edition September 2017 ISBN 978-0-06-265158-7
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* From Provine’s interview in the 2008 documentary on intelligent design theory Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein. Sadly, Provine died in 2015 after a long struggle with cancer.
* From Chapter 61 in Charles Dickens’s 1838 novel Oliver Twist.
* There once was a family so poor that one Christmas they could afford to put only horse manure under their Christmas tree. The next morning, their little daughter saw the pile of manure and squealed with delight. When her puzzled parents asked why she was so happy to see a pile of horse manure under the tree, she clapped her hands together and chirped, “Because I know there’s a pony in there somewhere!”
* The self-rebuke, uttered when Huxley first read Darwin’s manuscript of On the Origin of Species, was, “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that!”
* Consider the harsh reception of Thomas Nagel and his 2012 book criticizing the Neo-Darwinist “consensus,” Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False.
* “Universal acid” is described by Dennett as a boyhood fantasy, an acid that is so corrosive that nothing can contain it. As Dennett describes it, “[universal acid] dissolves glass bottles and stainless-steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake? After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, what would the world look like?” (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, p. 63).
* The word “homeostasis” was coined by the American physiologist Walter B. Cannon in the 1920s.
* [–25.497600o, 18.171285o], in case you want to look it up.
* Nama is one of a large family of so-called click languages spoken by the many Khoekhoe (pronounced “kway-kway”) tribes of southern Africa. These include the Nama, Damara, and Hai||om (or Bushmen, to use the more familiar, if now disfavored, designation). “Mukurob” is a Europeanized rendering of the actual pronunciation, which in standard orthography is rendered “Mû!kharub,” with the circumflex (^) indicating a nasalization of the “u” and the exclamation point representing the so-called alveolar click, where the tongue is pulled down from the roof of the mouth to make a hollow “pop” sound. The diversity of clicks in the Khoekhoe language family (more formally known as Khoekhoegowab) is immense.
* There are different theories about the origin of the name. One legend points to a rivalry between the Nama and the cattle-herding Herero people, who were encroaching on the Nama from the north. The Herero, rich in fat cattle, mocked the Nama as having “nothing but rocks.” In response, the Nama pointed to the Mukurob as a special rock that connected them to their gods and the land. They invited their Herero taunters to use as many of their fat cattle as they could to pull the rock down, which they failed to do. In response, the Nama shouted “Mû kho ro!,” or, “There, you see!”
* To no end yet, however. I visited the site in 2015, and the Mukurob is still a pile of rubble.
* There is another interesting local legend about this rock, attributed to the San, that the Mukurob would stand as long as the white people ruled over Namibia. Once Namibia gained its independence in 1990, this legend, almost certainly apocryphal, was “recalled” as a typical example of the power of retrospective prophecy. It worked the other way, of course. Those of a dire frame of mind regarding Namibia’s independence under the ruling party of SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organization) turned the prophecy around and regarded the fall of the Mukurob as a portent of impending disaster.
* The Israeli chemist Addy Pross has designated this as “dynamic kinetic stability,” or DKS, although it is far from stable.
* The Murciélago is the latest incarnation of the so-called Lamborghini super cars, built around Lamborghini’s LP640 engine, with 6.4-liter displacement, twelve cylinders, and numerous design innovations to effectively harness the engine’s power. As is the tradition with the Lamborghini company, the name of the car derives from the sport of bullfighting. The car is the namesake of a legendary fighting bull from an 1879 match in Cordoba during which the bull kept fighting despite enduring more than two dozen strokes of the sword. So impressive was the bull’s passion that the matador, Rafael Molina Sánchez, spared the bull’s life, a rare honor. Murciélago himself went on to found the Miura, one of the most famous of the lineages of Spanish fighting bulls (though some doubt has been cast on this story).
* In the archaic sense of the word: inspiring reverential wonder.
* In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne was forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her clothing to signify her adulterous relationship with the minister of her church, Arthur Dimmesdale.
* In therapeutic bloodletting, sometimes as much as half the patient’s blood volume was removed from circulation. The amount of blood to be drained for the therapy to be deemed effective was usually determined by the point at which the patient fainted.
* Therapeutic bloodletting survived into the early twentieth century and provides a remarkable object lesson in the cultural inertia that imbues medical practice. Bloodletting had long been justified as a means of draining an excess of various humors from the body, restoring balance. Well into the nineteenth century, by the time the notion of humors had fallen into disfavor, bloodletting continued to be the therapy of choice for certain types of fever, notably “sthenic” fevers, which were marked by agitation and hyperactivity, and was justified by its “calming” effect on the patient. Bloodletting also persisted as a treatment for “dropsy,” known today as congestive heart failure. In the early twentieth century, bloodletting fell into near-complete disfavor and was denounced as quackery. The practice continues, however, as the therapy of choice for certain disorders of excess blood cell production (polycythemia and hemochromatosis). Bloodletting of sorts through the use of medicinal leeches is returning as an accepted medical practice, mostly for treatment of necrosis and hematoma.
